Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Holy Crap! It's Been A While!!

Life's been CRAZY! I've been back and forth to Ottawa a few times, Northern Ontario, Lake Placid, Niagara Falls and fit a race in there somewhere. After one of my Ottawa trips I went out with Logan to his school playday at Dofasco park. As you can see from the pic above it was a beautiful day and the kids had a blast.

From there it was up to North Bay and Huntsville for work. On the way I made the stop at Webers - yum! The weather turned mild and cloudy but remained rainfree.

I got 13k in on the Muskoka 70.3 run course. Very hilly, very scenic.

Muskoka beauty!

I also got 3500m at the Centennial Pool in Huntsville so a solid training day was achieved.

At the end of the next week it was off to Lake Placid for some course scouting. It rained extremely hard most of the drive down and only stopped about 1/2 hour outside Placid. Peter, Sara, Logan and I arrived at 6:15pm. We quickly unloaded and Peter and I decided to head up Whiteface Mountain and make the summit before sundown.

After 1:10 of climbing at 7.9% grade (average) we made the summit as the sun was about to disappear. It was an interesting decent with the last few kms in darkness but we safely got down and the view was spectacular.

Cool pic of the Whiteface climb.

The next day I ran 6k with Sara then did 21.5k with Peter on the Ironman run course. From there we suited up for a swim in Mirror Lake.

The water did not look warm and it certainly wasn't. It was probably hovering around 60F - a little cold for my liking.

With nuts now cowering up inside our guts we ventured out. We did one loop of the swim and that was enough given the temperature.

The Saturday long bike was a perfect riding day - clear and mild. Whiteface Mountain was in full view.

Peter on his new Cervelo machine. I put 155k in and Peter went well over 200k as he continued to ride with Sara for 50k once we were done.

Now the reward! We went to the Adirondack Steak and Seafood Restaurant for some beer and red meat - DELICIOUS!

Sunday was travel day back to Ontario but before that we drove up Whiteface to explore the summit some more. This pic shows the switchbacks near the top.

The Fam at the true summit.

Logan and his buddy Peter.

Once back from Placid I immediately went to Ottawa for a couple of days then the following weekend I was off to Niagara Falls for a conference. In between these I did the Welland Sprint Triathlon. The distances were 750s/30k b/7.5k r. I was happy with the race and performed decently even with the wind and heat. Welland is FLAT! I averaged 1:50/100m for the swim, 36.7k on the bike and 4:41per km for the run. I ended up 32nd overall and 6/27 in the 45-49 age group.

What a view. Up next for me? I begin my final buildup to Ironman Lake Placid to the start of my taper on July 15th. Things are going well - I hope to drop some more weight and get a few more long workouts in all disciplines. If I manage that raceday should be fine. Love the process!